A New Car!
It’s been twenty years since I bought a new car. Which is not to say I’ve been driving the same old car those twenty years. It IS to say that I’ve been leasing a car for all those years for various and sundry reasons.
The recent move to Delaware caused the issue to raise its head as my leasing company did not do business in Delaware. So I kept the Merryland tags on the vehicle and within four months of the move, the lease was up.
I then arranged to a month to month lease while I decided what to do.
Then the holidays came up and I couldn’t think of anything less that I wanted to deal with than the hassle of buying a car.
Not that I wasn’t excited, if a bit nervous, at the prospect. Even myself, who thinks cars should be comfortable and always start when the key is turned, was keen on the new car-buying event I would soon face. I pay very little attention to cars. In fact, if one held a gun to my head I couldn’t tell them the kind of car my husband drives and he’s owned it for five years. It’s a little blue car is all I know. And I have NEVER driven it.
It was simple matter to conclude that the new vehicle would simply HAVE to be something more substantial than a mere car. Sometimes I wonder if we are the only couple left in the world what does not own an SUV, pickup or sturdy station wagon type of thing. We had two cars, one sort of a luxury thing and the other a simple commuter affair. Every time we had to carry lumber or even bring home a Christmas tree it became an ordeal. Forget ever loading up a sofa and bringing it home. And with our move there were times when substantial hardware had to be toted. Causing me to load six sheets of fencing in the trunk of my Chrysler 300 Gold, affixing a red flag to the four feet that jutted out and driving down the road looking for all the world like a Beverly Hillbilly.
Also, there’s the weather factor. Neither of our current cars drove well through any sort of snow fall, that Chrysler 300 Gold being fitted with very wide tires that tended to slide instead of the reverse. Husband’s car is, of course, that little blue wheelbarrow thing.
At this point we consider the politically incorrect SUV and the pending crisis of environmental warming. NOT!
An SUV, as I envision the vehicle associated with that term, was entirely too big. I am aware that SUV’s come in many sizes but my mind had this huge affair envisioned and I was sticking to it.
Husband did the research. He sent me links and pics and such, and suggested there should be three different vehicles I should choose from.
Already I forget the other two because my eyes honed in on the Jeep Liberty and would not be changed.
Thus it is and without having spent nary one dime one fine day I went to the dealer, picked me out a Jeep Liberty, color BerylGreen I’m not making that up, and within an hour, drove it home.
God Bless America.
I love sitting way up high when I drive. Driving a car, I’m telling you, is a disadvantage nowadays. Little old ladies drive around in huge SUV’s. Get two of those puppies on either side of you in the parking lot and a small car has to pull out blindly. Finally I’m up the same level of the rest of the driving world and hey, it’s a whole different world up here.
The vehicle does, noting this one minor negative, tend to sway way more upon a gust of wind than my car. It’s only slightly unnerving and I suspect, with time, I will not even notice it.
“Yeah,” husband responds, “those types of cars are higher. You need to be careful it don’t tip over.”
Son-in-law tells me that if it should tip over that I will be well-protected.
If someone were to ask me, I’d just as soon NOT tip over at all.
But that’s just me.
Pepperoni
Been doing a lot of thinking about pepperoni lately.
And I’ve decided that pepperoni is a food that would not exist were it not for pizza.
Tell me another dish made with pepperoni.
I’m not talking a couple of slices added to a submarine sandwich . I’m talking a dish where pepperoni is as integral a part of as it is to pizza.
Need to consider these sorts of things once in a while.
Sean Hannity
Sean Hannity, half of Fox’s Hannity and Colmes team or afternoon radio talk show host, take your pick, is almost at the end of his run.
The fellow might be cute as a button but he can be a nasty somebody.
Seems the folks at FreeRepublic have been complaining about Sean’s style for quite a while. I’d like to join that chorus and suggest that the complaints have not been without merit.
I heard Hannity launched into a rant about FreeRepublic, calling the posters a bunch of has-beens, yada, yada.
Too often I had to grab the remote during a Hannity and Colmes segment. Because Sean will launch into a tirade against a guest and he becomes, well he goes a little nuts.
I have an example that I’ll try to describe.
There were two youngsters that had thrown something, I’m not sure what, some object, at recruiters on their campus for the military.
The youngsters got arrested but were released in time to show up on Hannity and Colmes. Colmes talk to them for a while. They explained their objection to military recruiters on campus.
Sean takes over the dialogue, introduces himself, then holds his pencil into the air.
“Do you have the right to throw things at somebody?” Sean asked, belligerence in his voice, his lips pursed as indicator for kick-ass to come.
Right here and now, as The Wise I sees it, I want to smack Sean. We already know they don’t have the right to throw things at somebody. THEY know they don’t have the right to throw things at somebody. The question is raised simply to bring the guests to their knees. The first thing they must do is admit to malfeasance that Sean may smirk. All dialogue is then ceased.
The guests tried to continue “That’s not the point,” they said and they were right. It’s NOT the point.
If you are in the vast TV audience watching this, you might like to know why these two people deliberately broke the law to cast aspersions upon military campus recruitment. Me, the rest of the audience, Allen and the two guests have already concluded no one had the right to throw things at anyone.
Yet Sean asked this question FIVE times, all the while holding his pencil, pointing his index finger, pursing his lips and looking mad. I flipped the remote as fast as I could. He looked like a caricature of a conservative and he looked really stupid.
Not that it will ever happen, but I really wouldn’t want Mr. Hannity to ever read my criticism because it’s brutal. On some level I believe he is a very sincere, well-intentioned man with a great big heart. I also understand there’s a wide diversity of thought out there and mine is but only mine. Judging by the buzz of complaints, at FreeRepublic but I’ve seen it elsewhere, I am certainly not alone.
I only listen to Sean Hannity’s talk show when he has a guest with whom he agrees.
The man does not handle callers or opposing views guests well at all. He ought to look at it a bit closer and stop attacking the messengers. Which would only be Sean Hannity’s audience when you think about it.
Some Apprentice Notes
Fans of this series probably were happy that the awful Michael was finally fired. One of the females said Michael once bragged that he was God’s gift to women and other self-flattering comments that got lots of snorts in the boardroom.
The task that week was to design a mobile business. The street smart group came up with a mobile casting studio that won the competition. The wise guys came up with a mobile spa, a good idea I thought. The casting studio on wheels was the better idea though I’ve never heard of a stationary casting studio. It was a better idea I suppose because, hey, it won.
Myself would have came up with a portable beauty parlor. More important, I’d have found me a nice retirement community, parked that puppy right in the middle somewhere, and went around to all the apartments/rooms, etc. with a $5.00 off coupon for any beauty service.
With this show requiring completion with such a short time span, this idea might have a problem. Because such a plan would work better if flyers or advertisements in a local paper were used a week in advance of the day the mobile beauty salon would be on location.
The crux of the notion being that a mobile beauty salon would be a most welcome business and retirement communities alone would keep it solvent.
There is that little problem with the water but hey, it could be hooked up to a hose.
Anyway, Michael really deserved to go. Imagine having that little snot as an apprentice.
Excerpt from My Book "Everything You Need to Know About Being a Woman Can Be Learned in the Garden"
The Better Homes and Gardens
=======================
Gardeners will spend all the growing days endlessly checking the growth, the blooms, the bugs. They pull the weeds, shoo the grasshoppers that should be gone but for the lazy birds eating the peanuts, and worry that the Budellia bush will not bloom this year.
They fashion and mold the curved garden perimeters for flow. They calculate the bloom time of each plant, the sun/shade requirements, the nearby maple that would cast a deep shadow. They watch the growth in the current growing season and dream of future ones. The gardeners' job is never done, for the plantings keep on growing and the warm Springs call for more.
It is the Winters that we find ourselves scanning the seed catalogs and garden magazines for photographic substitutes of the green we so crave for the cabin fever. Indeed, the garden magazines will so provide expansive spreads of rose-acred estates and Wisteria-espaliered trellis'. The gardens in the magazines curve through the emerald grass sinuously, perfect in the proportions and beautiful in the aesthetics. We view the gardens of the better homes, and vow that the growing season immediately hence our own yards will producethe same result.
With minds on the sinuous curves, we attack the new Spring gardens with Winter weary zeal. We carry upon our ageing backs the landscaping stones that would attractively prevent the weeds. We dig the holes for the cultivars and place tasteful garden statuary throughout. We stand back and wait the May month to send the sun that will pull it all together.
It becomes the job of the moles to pull all the miniature rose bushes, so thoughtfully chosen for color, down from the ground by their very roots. The squirrel-rodents assume the job of maintaining the container plantings by tossing all petunias placed within carelessly to the side to plant their own harvest of acorn and hickory nuts. The birds fly over head no mindful of the toilets, and send the seed of their poop directly down to our gardens to nestle in the earth and provide some handsome poison ivy.
On their best days, our gardens would only qualify for Mediocre Homes and Gardens, for which we have no subscription.
by Pat Fish
The Martha Showoffs then begin to beguile us with the hydrangeas we would grow to bloom as huge floral snowballs. At prime bloom and after appropriate compliments from all who were amazed at such wonderful growth, we would pull the hydrangea blooms from the bush we had grown our hard working selves, and hang them to dry in our artfully painted garden sheds. The blooms would hang down from restored antique wine racks to dry from the moisture. At the proper time, we would retire to our garden sheds so comfortably furnished with Louis IX reproduction garden stools, and create amazing floral arrangements from our dried hydrangeas that would include the huge, dried blooms, gold gilded ribbon tied carefully into a careless bow, and sprigs of fernery snipped from our very greenhouses.
We walk our pitiful gardens and ponder the Martha Showoffs who most certainly would not have the Virginia Creeper growing straight up from the middle of her azaleas. We ponder the better gardens of the better homes and know that they would never have bindweed strangling and blooming upon their very fences. We suffer silent gardener sobs that we will never have the hydrangeas that would be dried to beautiful arrangements. We mourn our garden pictures that will never appear as centerfold in the playboy magazines of the better homes.
And as we squint our gardener eyes, and allow the middle age eyes to softly become unfocused, our gardens look as lovely as those so pictured. Almost. Not Quite. Maybe just a little. Then we inexplicably rail at the gardens in the magazines that present themselves as role models to our sloped lots and soft soil. The espaliered Wisteria would demand more sun than the elderly and tall oaks of our gardens would allow. The hydrangeas that would form our floral arrangements would never dry to perfection in our humid air.
We muse as we know full well that our slanted gardens decorated with planters of acorn and hickory tress, will never be a better garden and that the Victory gardener will never step foot upon our lots.
It is the perfection of the slope they seek; the abundant access of the sun that would allow the roses to grow unblackened by humid mold; the sinuous curves of the gardens and the soft sound of the manmade pond as it gurgles in the background. And we know that even if we had the funds to build the ponds, the herons that live in our Hillery Beach cove would eat the gold fish quickly over one night fall that sit like so many carp in a manmade barrel.
We must resign ourselves to the stone cast when the meteor hit the Hillery Beach cove an eon ago, creating a land depression on which we would struggle to grow our gardens that can never be in the magazines.
More Arab Humor Mined from the Comments
Something, may I add, I encourage. For their awful behavior in terms of civilized norms, well why shouldn’t we make fun of them? Like the Poles before them, let them prove that they can act right. Then the jokes will stop.
the arab
Akmed the arab came to the united states from the middle east. He was here only a few months when he became very ill. He went to doctor after doctor, but none could help him.
Finally, he went to an arab doctor who said, "take dees bocket, go into de odder room, poop in de bocket, pee on de poop, and den put your head down over de bocket and breathe in de fumes for ten minutes." Akmed took the bucket, went into the other room, pooped in the bucket, peed on the poop, bent over and breathed in the fumes for ten minutes.
Coming back to the doctor he said, "it worked. I feel terrific! "What was wrong with me?"
The doctor said, "you were just homesick."
~~~~~~~~~
Suggestion for Gardening Book
Pulled this suggestion from the FreeRepublic web site, a response to my promo blurb. Note pic of book suggested below. Suggestions always welcome to an easier and better gardening result.
Here's a book I love:
“ Carrots Love Tomatoes:
Secrets of Companion Planting
for Successful Gardening”
by Louise Riotte
~~~~~~~~
A Warm Thank You
It’s always nice when someone takes the time to express genuine gratitude for a kind act. Though I must emphasize that Steve’s site is a most wonderful site to have been named web site of the week. I’m going to put you in the sidebar, too, Steve
Hi Pat - Thank you very much for making my Dark Side site your "Site of the Week." I am very pleased and flattered that you would do so. I only started it Dec.29 of last year, and now I'm nearing 10,000 pageloads, which astonishes me. I very much appreciate your kind words and overall support by doing this. It means a great deal to me, as it's the first time another blogger has ever done such a thing. I hope it's something I can "pay forward."
Again, many thanks. - Steve
DARKSIDE HERE
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